


What To Do With Significance

by SylvanAuctor



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 03:28:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanAuctor/pseuds/SylvanAuctor
Summary: Breq tries out being officially human.





	What To Do With Significance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackedofSpades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/gifts).



Testimony had ended. Breq Mianaai, Emissary of the Artificial Intelligences to the Presger, Deputy Commander in Chief of the Republic Fleet of the Two Systems, sat in her delegation’s quarters and waited for the results of the Conclave. Below Presger Station, on the Homeworld, lights danced and morphed in inscrutable patterns. Breq was reminded of the brain scans of a Captain commanding in pitched battle, flush with adrenaline and alert to every minutia. Perhaps  _ Justice of Toren  _ could have watched the conclave and known what was happening. Breq brushed that off as fanciful, but it nagged her as long as she looked down at that oddly familiar surface. She turned her back to the window.

The AI Delegation quarters were decorated with lovingly furnished and decorated by Zeiat herself. The walls were covered densely in hand-painted fish. Some were intact, others had their skin peeled back, revealing complicated insides. It was clear to Breq that some of the “fish” were actually cakes, but when Zeiat had shown her the quarters for the first time, she had not the heart to say so. Apparently informed by another Translator, Zeiat had also made sure that Breq’s room was furnished with 1.11 cubic meters of red clay, a bowl of water, and a pottery wheel.

“In case you wanted to make yourself a tea set,” Zeiat had explained. “The kiln is just down the hall in the common area, so you’ll have to share with the humans.”

Breq had never even touched a pottery wheel before. There was never any need. A ship would not be required to know the craft, and for Radchaai, pottery was in the same category as sewing or string music; the attention of the hands made it quite intimate. Still, she was curious if she could succeed at the attempt. A single tea bowl, to start. Nothing ambitious. She removed her gloves and carefully set them aside, then took a cool lump of clay from her block and moistened it in the water bowl. She started the wheel spinning, and set to work.

Breq mastered the wheel with surprising speed. Had this body been a potter? Had another of One Esk, or  _ Justice of Toren _ ? She could not know. Still, she graduated from tea bowls quickly, smashing the perfectly round forms and recycling them into more ambitious projects. A flower vase. A decanter for arrack. An incense burner. She took them off the wheel and twisted her cutting wire into a tiny device. Using its fine point, she carved into the clay, first copying the fishes on the wall, then scenes from memory. These, too, she smashed and recycled.

She practiced for a month and a day while the Conclave lights pulsed and raced below her. Her only interruptions were Zeiat, thrice a day with skel, water, and a selfless offering of fish sauce, and Tisarwat, who was allowed to wander freely between the human and AI dorms. Anaander was allowed as well, but she stayed diligently in her own room. Finally, Breq had made three pieces and was ready to have them fired.

Her first was an incense burner, short and round. Into the clay, she had carved her memory of the Temple of Ikkt, rising above the wide and flat swamps of Ors. The act of carving had ached with the memory of Lieutenant Awn. The view of the Temple, this particular angle, was from their house. Breq would put this burner next to her EskVar, Toren, Kalr, and She Who Sprang From The Lily, and she would add Ikkt to her devotions.

Her second began as a bowl, but Breq had pushed her skill as far as she dared. She had taken the basic shape and pulled and pressed the clay until the features of a face emerged, serene and nurturing. The details of eyebrows and hair she did with her tiny wire tool. She would ask Mercy of Kalr if she would like it placed in the Captain’s chair, as a symbol of her command of herself.

Breq had agonized over what to make for her final piece. Complex, ambitious designs had pleased her as she made them on the wheel, but she loathed the thought of this gift sitting on a shelf, untouched. What she made, then, was simple. A teacup, unadorned except for three words of Notai calligraphy in Breq’s best hand:  _ Life and prosperity. _

She walked with her three pieces through the common area, passing by the three Anaanders, and set them in the kiln to fire. As they were firing, the Conclave bell rang.

Zeiat came and knocked on Breq’s door. She said, “The Conclave is over. The Presger found that Artificial Intelligences are Human, and therefore Significant. Congratulations, Emissary Breq. Has anyone told you how much you look like Fleet Captain Breq? You two really should work on that, it’s difficult to tell the difference between you. Now, your shuttle back to Athoek departs in eleven minutes. Please be ready.”

She was ushered across the gravity boundary before the safety-locked kiln would open.

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by JackedofSpades.


End file.
